Discussion ShootTheShaggyDog / Videogames

• Trinity. It's a 1986 Time Travel game that begins with your narrow escape from a nuclear holocaust, which surely implies that your goal is to prevent World War III. And you do eventually make it to the site of the first atom bomb test... but you can't change history, and history now includes nuclear extinction. You're in a Stable Time Loop, and all you can do is escape from the holocaust again ... though it's implied you'll end up back there over and over again. While you do prevent disaster from happening in 1945, the final line emphasizes that, ultimately, you are surrounded by children who will never grow up.
  • Until The Great Politics Mess Up, this is how a lot of people felt for real.
  • To be fair, you did do something good: you prevented the nuclear test. The explosions caused when nuclear bombs fell were from the time paradox you created. You're all still doomed, but real nuclear bombs would have been much worse.

I'm going to argue that this is not an example, and here's why: it's true that the game does end with everything the same as before the player started trying to fix things, but it's not true that the player's efforts were pointless. It's established that without the player's efforts, things would have ended up much worse.

"At least you stopped things getting worse" is a disappointing outcome for a player hoping for "yay! you fixed it!", but it's not Shoot the Shaggy Dog.

Theres not a single example here that even remotely fits this trope. This page needs a purge